remaking a 1967 omc snow cruiser

Editor’s note: Each season we ask you to share your stories and photos of your favorite
vintage sleds. Here are a couple stories and a selection of the photos you’ve sent us.

In 1967 my uncle bought an OMC Snow Cruiser 207E new. It was made in Peterborough, Ont., by Outboard Marine Corp., but was basically the same as the Johnson / Evinrudes in the U.S., including a 20.5-inch wide track with electric start.

My uncle kept it at my grandma’s cottage up in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal. I always loved going there whatever the season, but one winter when I was about 12, (mid-1970s) I bugged my dad to get that old snowmobile in the shed going. I had never seen it run.

He thought there was something wrong with the engine so he and my uncle took the engine into the cottage and took it apart. Fortunately for them, my grandmother (their mother) wasn’t home that weekend. I don’t think she would have been very pleased about greasy engine parts all over her living room table. I don’t recall what the actual problem was, but I remember that at least one of the piston rings was broken into three pieces.

Not having any parts readily available, they rigged the pieces back together and it ran great. I remember going through the woods – my dad driving with me on the back. That was the first time I had been on a snowmobile. Boy was it fun!

We used the Snow Cruiser for a few seasons, hitching up a sled or small boat to pull around for fun on the lake. Eventually my dad let me drive the Cruiser around and take it on the lake by myself. I could have spent all day with it.

Going idle
In my teens I stopped going up to the cottage, and the machine again sat idle for years. When the cottage was sold around 1989 my uncle didn’t want the machine, so he sold it to me for $20. It was still in extremely good condition, due to being kept in a dry, weatherproof shed and not being used much.

I picked it up with a buddy, a big vintage snowmobile buff, and he was stunned at how clean it was. I further impressed him (and myself) when I opened the storage box and produced the original 1967 license plate.
We took the machine to my buddy’s Ontario farm, where we put in fresh gas and it fired right up. We rode around for a few weekends, but then decided to give it a complete overhaul.

This was the early ’90s and I took the Cruiser apart down to the last bolt, and restored everything possible, an operation that carried into early winter with a lot of work being done in an unheated barn in sub-freezing weather.
My machine is medium blue, except for the hood, which is a purplish-blue. I found paint to match the medium blue, but the paint I put on the hood isn’t as purplish as it should be. I couldn’t mask its “Snow Cruiser” script with tape, as it would likely peel off the fragile old decals, so I did it by applying Vaseline to the logo with a toothpick. This is not something I want to do again very soon, so I figured the hood would stay that color for a while.

In my quest for sled parts though, I phoned OMC Canada to see if someone there knew of anybody who might still have some old stock. They gave me the name of a dealer east of Montreal. He had been around a long time and had sold these sleds new.

So my buddy and I went to the dealer and asked a very old man behind the counter if he still had parts for Snow Cruisers. He looked at us funny for a moment, then pulled out a big binder with all the old parts lists and diagrams. My buddy’s eyes went big when he saw all that vintage documentation.

I asked about a few parts and the old man disappeared into the cellar for 15 minutes, returning with a snow flap, the big garter spring for the drive clutch, and a couple of rubber suspension bushings (there are no springs on the bogies). I wondered if there was anything more in that basement!

When reworking the engine, I took the cylinders to a rebuild shop, and the guy said he could bore them out and find me oversized pistons. Well, he bored the cylinders out to within an inch of their lives and I got these crazy pistons with a dome on top instead of the original flat tops.

After I assembled the motor it felt like the compression ratio had been doubled when I tried to pull the starter rope. The electric starter would grudgingly start it, but the battery had to be really good. Yet it still ran fine, and pulled like a mule, though it topped out at only about 30 mph, as these machines always had. I did install a larger drive sprocket though, and that got a few more mph out of it.

One odd thing that came from this was that the engine shop guy asked us if we wanted some old snowmobile oil he had lying around. He gave us a couple cases for a few cents a bottle. It’s called Nitro Joe’s, and the bottle said it was good for snowmobiles, lawnmowers, washing machines, etc. The neat thing was that it had a picture of my snowmobile on the bottle. (Or since it came from the U.S., I guess it was depicting a Johnson / Evinrude)
Another neat find happened when a friend and I were looking for garages to rent. In an old building we were being shown, we noticed that part of the storage was being used by the marine dealer who owned the building. Looking at the jumble of old parts and equipment in a corner, I saw a big fluorescent dealer window sign. On it in big lettering was the Snow Cruiser logo. Trying to hide my interest, I asked the guy who was showing us around if he’d sell me the sign. He checked with his boss who said to just take it. Cool!

Not long after, I was with my buddy checking marine dealers for old parts, when one dealer let him have his entire collection of Snow Cruiser parts manuals for a few bucks. He scooped up all the books and gave me the one for the ’67 models.

Going idle, again
I used the machine for a couple of seasons, but I had newer machines to ride, so I didn’t use it much. Then about 1994, I let a friend take it for a ride. It came back at the end of a rope. I guess the extra stress from those crazy pistons finally caught up to it and something gave out. I had just bought a house, and already had other projects going, so I didn’t have time to work on it. So, again the Cruiser sat waiting for someone (me) to put it back into operation.

A short time later, I was with my buddy when he bought an old Johnson rotary and I snapped up two complete Snow Cruiser engines from the same guy, figuring I could put together one engine with original pistons and cylinders and have plenty of spare parts. Now I just needed some spare time.

Well, 15 years passed before I finally made the time to look at the old beast. I took apart the engine and grimaced when I saw that one of the pistons had smeared itself all over the cylinder wall. I took apart those spare engines I’d picked up years before, and used the best parts to make one good one. Again the Snow Cruiser slowly lumbers over the snow.

One thing that finally inspired me to fix the sled was seeing a guy on the next street who restores Snow Cruisers and has a bunch. Rather a coincidence, in a town of only 1,900 people. Every winter, I would hear him tooling around on one, as they make a very distinctive sound with that opposed twin engine.

More inspiration came when my uncle, who had been rummaging through old documents, mailed me the original registration paper he got when he bought the sled. (Registration and a Quebec license plate in 1967 cost all of $4.)
With that in hand I was inspired to look on eBay, where I scored a mint owners manual and a reprint of an original sales brochure with dealer-scribbled prices on it. Cool!

With the Snow Cruiser running again I can now take my 8-year-old son for rides, so this machine can be enjoyed by a third generation of snowmobilers.